One of Ellicottville’s most well known local artists Shad Nowicki soon will be hitting the big leagues as one of his collections goes to LAX.
His five-part paint series “Evolution of the Modern Age of America” shows how the United States has changed over the past century.
The series features five different animals surrounded and immersed in a different aspect of America’s development. The bunny with claws represents fortitude, the bird represent aviation, the chimp with a scorpion’s tale shows the progression of corporations, the tortoise with a helicopter blade attached to it signifies innovation and the fifth piece is an elephant wearing heels, which embodies culture.
The five paintings will be hung in LAX for millions of people to see. However, LAX is just the first stop for these paintings. After Los Angeles the paintings will continue on with their world tour and visit nine other countries.
Interestingly enough, all of these paintings were created on about 12 to 15 pizza boxes that Nowicki put together. Building the canvas took between 24 and 30 hours to create and then each painting took between 40 and 45 hours of straight work.
This is not the first time Nowicki has used out of the ordinary objects as a canvas; he’s used skateboards, VHS tapes and pretty much anything sturdy he can find.
“Necessity is the Mother of invention,” Nowicki said. When low on money, he said he will use anything he can to paint.
Growing up Nowicki was always a “paintbrush kid, not a crayon kid.”
But for the past 14 years he has been painting professionally, turning out about 260 paintings per year. Nowicki has always been an independent artist until about six months ago when he received a call from an art gallery in Los Angeles.
As a self-taught artist, Nowicki doesn’t like to work with just one medium or style all the time.
“I’m known as the guy with a 1000 styles … I like to hop around a lot,” Nowicki said.
He likes to make his paintings almost three-dimensional, so that when the painting is hung and people are walking around the picture wraps around the sides and is not just a flat surface that people look at.
And if you have seen Nowicki’s work and thought perhaps it was a screen print or a photograph, you would be mistaken – it has all been hand painted.
Nowicki describes art not as the monkey on his back but the monster on his back because he could not imagine doing anything else with his life.
“Art is about people seeing it, it’s not all about money,” Nowicki said. “It’s about showing art in a different light.”
Awe-struck that all this is actually happening, Nowicki will be shipping off his collection to LAX soon and hopes to be moving to Colorado within the next six months and eventually moving to LA.
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